# Avenue of Pollard Birches and Poplars

- By: Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853–1890)
- Date: March 1884
- Medium: Reed pen and iron-gall ink on tan laid paper
- Classification: Drawing and Watercolor
- Dimensions: 19.2 × 26.5 cm (7 9/16 × 10 7/16 in.)
- Culture: Netherlands
- Credit line: Gift of Richard and Mary L. Gray
- Museum: [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/202382)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/b380aac9-c63c-0e0a-b7ad-09c60916defe/full/843,/0/default.jpg
- Who can see it: Little Ones profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

Vincent van Gogh seems to have been inspired to make this melancholy drawing after reading the poem “Tristement” (sadly) by the French writer François Coppee, who was known as the “poet of the humble.” The poem describes a mourning widow proceeding along “a very long lane of giant, halfdenuded plane trees.”

Time has enhanced the drawing’s autumnal mood. The iron-gall ink that Van Gogh used, once black, has altered to a dark brown and imparted a golden tone to the paper, the pen lines bleeding so that close hatchings merge and the contrast between light and dark is now muted.

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0